2300 AD vs Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier

Compare 2300 AD and Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	2300 AD	Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier
Genre	Scifi	Historical
Tags	Career-Based, Skill-Based, Simulation, Combat-Heavy, Tactical, Crunchy, Ship-Based, Exploration, Random Tables, Strong GM Support	Simulation, Crunchy, Deadly, Gritty, Sandbox, Classless, Career-Based, Tactical, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support
Core Mechanic	For a task, roll d10 and add modifiers from applicable skills and characteristics; meet a difficulty target from 2 for Simple to 18 for Impossible to succeed. A natural 1 fumbles, while failed checks use a separate roll to determine whether the character may retry or suffers a mishap. Hasty, hazardous, uncertain, and cooperative tasks modify time, failure risk, information, or group participation without changing the core check.	Gunfights run on a Count Up measured in tenths of a second instead of turns or rounds. Each character rolls d10 and adds Speed for a Starting Initiative, where lower is better, then adds each action's Count cost to find when it happens. To shoot, place the Shot Clock overlay on the aimed point of a Target Silhouette and roll d20 plus Accuracy modifiers. A 25 or higher hits the exact spot and 14 or less misses. Totals in between draw a poker card whose suit sets the direction the shot drifts from the aim point. Skill checks roll d100 and succeed at or above a mastery number that falls as the skill improves, while ability checks roll d20 at or under the score.
Dice	d10	d20, d100
Complexity	High	High
Availability	Paid	Paid
Runnability	4 of 5 book tools	5 of 5 book tools
License	All Rights Reserved	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Noncommercial only — Mongoose Publishing Fair Use Policy	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	GDW	Kenzer & Company
Year	1988	2007
Languages	English	English
Best For	Groups who want career-shaped crews exploring a politically divided interstellar frontier where starship operations and hard-science constraints drive missions.	Groups who want a long-running, town-centered Western campaign where characters build careers and reputations, and where gunfights are rare, precise, and often fatal.
Highlights	Career terms turn pre-play service into skills and organizational ties, giving each crew member a practical history that feeds later missions. Space combat uses hex movement and signature-based detection, making maneuver and sensor discipline as important as weapon range. Linked world-generation and mapping procedures build planets down to regional terrain, giving exploration campaigns playable locations instead of setting prompts.	Shots target specific locations rather than an abstract opponent, so a near miss can still strike nearby and hit location feeds a detailed wound and healing system. Profession Paths award Building Points for career objectives such as opening a business or winning an election, so a banker or rancher advances as surely as a gunfighter. Cattle drives and jury trials run as complete mini-games with their own daily checks or juror track, so frontier work generates play outside combat.
Considerations	Character creation can end when a turning-point roll fails, leaving a concept in its current career before the player intended. Combat routes each hit through location and damage-type tables, adding several lookups to a fight. The future history assumes a World War III and French hegemony, so campaigns are tied to a specific 1980s vision of the 24th century.	Running the full game takes the Player's Guidebook plus its separate GM Addendum PDF, along with a poker deck, the Shot Clock overlay, and Target Silhouettes for gunfights. Characters die at 0 hit points with no recovery from death, and slow healing, infection, and incurable disease can sideline a character for weeks of game time. The alternate-history setting presents slavery and period racial attitudes as setting facts with mechanical effects, such as a higher literacy cost for freed-slave characters.